When owner Mark Cuban begins meeting with free agents on
Thursday, one of the selling points he’ll make will be that the
possibility exists of playing multiple games per season at Cowboys Stadium, an
NBA source says.

It will be another chip that the Mavericks can push into the
pot, although it remains to be seen if they can sway LeBron James, Dwyane Wade,
Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson or somebody else to relocate to Dallas.

The NBA All-Star Game was played at the stadium in February
and the venue was met with rave reviews by most of the players. James, in
particular, is a huge Cowboys fan and while the odds are stacked heavily
against him coming to Dallas, any extra incentive that the Mavericks can supply
is like gold.

Meanwhile, president Donnie Nelson said a few minutes ago
that he has a plane reservation to Germany. However, he’s not sure he’ll
be on that plane yet because there seems to be a chance Dirk Nowitzki might be
coming across the pond later this week.

Nelson has a media session set for Wednesday in advance of
free-agency starting at 11:01 p.m.

June 28, 2010

As we wrote in the Sunday edition of The News, the Mavericks
are lining up their options for any and all free agents who might be out there.

But don’t get too hot and bothered by anything you
might here in the next 36 hours, including the idea that Joe Johnson is No. 1
on their list.

He’s on the Mavericks’ list, yes. But not
necessarily at the top.

Our good buddy at Yahoo Sports suggested that the Mavericks
will target Atlanta’s shooting guard, and they may do so. Adrian Wojnarowski
is usually pretty dialed in.

But so many of these kind of stories come from agents who
have ulterior motives. If they can get the word out that one team is hot for
their client, then the destination that is more desirable in the free-agent’s
eyes might take notice and ramp up its conviction to get said superstar.

That may or may not be going on here, but New York is
believed to be No. 1 on Johnson’s list. And indeed the rumor is that he
will meet with the Knicks Thursday afternoon.

Of course, this can’t possibly be true yet because it
would be tampering, right?

At any rate, if the Knicks were to offer, say, David Lee in a
sign-and-trade for Johnson, that’s a better asset for Atlanta than
anything the Mavericks can offer.

The Mavericks will have a couple of interesting names on
their team at the Las Vegas Summer League and likely will add a couple more
from the mini-camp going on at AAC the next couple of days.

They will have last year’s second-round pick Shan
Foster on the Vegas team, as well as Harvard guard Jeremy Lin and Moussa Seck,
a Senegalese 7-4 center who has been a project of the Mavericks for a year or
so now.

June 27, 2010

This is my once-every-four-years blog post about NBA
referees and why nobody should ever suspect wrongdoing or outright incompetency
about Bennett Salvatore or Dan Crawford or any of the other fine men in gray
that officiate NBA games.

All future griping about NBA officiating will be referred to
the World Cup governing committee known as FIFA.

Anybody who has watched any of the World Cup – and I
confess I actually watched the American games and a few others, which should be
grounds for giving up my basketball writer’s card – has seen that
soccer refereeing is infinitely more inept and archaic than anything the NBA or
the Mavericks have seen go wrong.

Missing a foul doesn’t seem nearly as important in a
game where there are 200 points scored as missing a goal in a game where there
are two goals scored…maybe.

What kind of integrity does soccer have these days?

If the NBA took a shot from Tim Donaghy, then what does
soccer have to say for itself when the simple act of instant replay could have
made a difference in several matches over the last couple of weeks.

Let the hooting and hollering begin.

Or, if there’s no outrage, then we can assume what
most of us have always known.

That soccer is irrelevant in this country. As great as
Dempsey and Donovan have been, there sport is page 9 material for all but a
month every four years.

If the ball went in the basket and nobody counted the two
points, I can assure you there would be a lot of fallout in the NBA.

In soccer, there seems to be none.

For that, the NBA can be thankful. At least fans care enough
to be outraged about it.

June 26, 2010

Jason Kidd, with baseball cap turned fashionably backward,
took his swings in the home-run derby at the Reebok Heroes Celebrity Baseball
Game a few minutes ago and it’s probably not a surprise that the
Mavericks’ guard has a pretty decent baseball swing.

He was a good athlete, obviously, and played some baseball
back in school. But he admitted to being rusty.

“A few swings in the batting cage isn’t enough
to get you back in shape,’’ he said.

Kidd reached the finals of the home-run contest, which was
more of a singles-hitting contest, to be honest. He lashed a couple of liners
to the outfield and lofted a couple of Texas Leaguers that didn’t scare
the warning track but still were pretty good for a guy who gets paid to play
basketball, not baseball.

Interestingly, Texas Legends coach Nancy Lieberman had one
of the best swings of the group. She hit a couple of ropes.

“Baseball was my best sport in high school,’’
she said. “I could have played for our high school baseball team with the
boys.’’

Seems like focusing on basketball ended up being the right
career path.

Harvard’s Jeremy Lin, who apparently is trying to
become the first American-born Asian to make it in the NBA, will be joining the
Mavericks for mini-camp on Monday and Tuesday and, possibly, for their summer
league team in Las Vegas.

The 6-5 shooter went to school at Harvard and got his fair
share of notoriety – some good and some bad – for his ethnicity at
Harvard.

But the guy can play, no doubt there.

He’s one of several players who went undrafted
Thursday night who are expected to come in to the mini-camp.

Don’t know if any of you are still enraptured by the
NBA draft, but it was interesting (and laughable) that Fran Fraschilla was
talking about Pape Sy, the Senegalese 6-7 forward who was just drafted by
Atlanta late in the second round.

Fran said the Hawks were trying to “catch lightning in
a bottle’’ and were hoping to find “the next Roddy Beaubois.’’

What? The next Roddy Beaubois?

Even Roddy Beaubois isn’t the next Roddy Beaubois yet.

It’s amazing how much respect the kid is getting as he
heads into a summer in which he needs to become everything everybody believes
he can be. It’s going to be interesting to see how the kid handles summer
league this year. It was a wide-eyed moment for him last year.